Review: Oculomotor Features as Markers of Cognitive Control Disorders in Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Scientists from the Department of Biology and Biotechnology of the Higher School of Economics and the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences have prepared a review in which they analyzed and summarized data on cognitive control disorders in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which were previously obtained in various studies using eye movement recording methods. The presented review can be found in the journal Modern Technology in Medicine.

Based on numerous studies, patients with OCD have been found to have impaired selective attention, inhibitory control and working memory, which correlates with an imbalance in the activity of the cortico-striar-thalamo-cortical circuit associated with the maintenance of cognitive control functions. As a consequence of a possible disturbance of the neurophysiological basis of cognitive control, patients with OCD often show changes in parameters of goal-directed oculomotor reactions.
The analysis found that slow tracking motion tasks, memory saccades, and antisaccadic tasks were the most frequently used in the studies. The data presented in the articles on slow eye tracking and memory saccades tasks are inconsistent, although they partially support a deterioration in selective attention and working memory. Most studies on the antisaccadic task have found impaired inhibitory control function in patients with OCD. Similar impairments, expressed in increased latency and higher frequency of errors in antisaccades, were also noted in first-degree relatives of patients, which allows us to consider such impairments as manifestations of the endophenotype associated with a predisposition to OCD. Confirmation of these results in experiments using complex antisaccade tasks using images of different modalities (taking into account the presence of increased anxiety in patients with OCD as the basis of the disease) may contribute to the validation of specific OCD markers in the future.